


I Search Myself (I Want You to Find Me)

by 221b_hound



Series: The Gladstone Variations (AU of Guitar Man) [3]
Category: Sherlock (TV)
Genre: Explicit Sexual Content, John used to be in a band, M/M, The Gladstone Variations, confessing fantasies, not kinky but oh TEH FEELS
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2013-07-18
Updated: 2013-07-18
Packaged: 2017-12-20 14:19:14
Rating: Explicit
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,772
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/888243
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/221b_hound/pseuds/221b_hound
Summary: <blockquote class="userstuff">
              <p>Sherlock has returned from his Year in Hell, and he and John are adjusting to being lovers. But still, so many of their nights together are frantic, tainted by nightmares and the memory of loss. Tonight, though. Tonight Sherlock wants to know what John used to imagine, when he thought of Sherlock so far away; and he wants to tell John what he would fantasise as well. It has nothing to do with kinks, and everything to do with sentiment.</p>
            </blockquote>





	I Search Myself (I Want You to Find Me)

**Author's Note:**

> The title is a lyric from I Touch Myself by the Divinyls.
> 
> This story is one of The Gladstone Variations, a slash AU of my BFF Guitar Man AU.

John plucks a few final, quiet notes from his guitar and then stills his hands, letting the vibration of the string hum from its solid A major to silence. He hasn’t been playing a song, really, just idly making sweet sounds. It’s not unlike Sherlock and his violin, though John strives for a more soothing effect. Sherlock has been restored to him for not quite a month, and the both of them are wracked still with insomnia and nightmares.

John props the guitar up against the wall on what is now his side of the bed, the left. Sherlock is already under the blankets on the right, hands folded over his stomach, contemplating the ceiling.

It's still strange, this. Maybe not strange, really, because it feels so right, but it's still new. They're still learning how it works, this new thing they are.  They are still negotiating boundaries (though there are precious few of those, it turns out) and how to indicate they need private space (though it seems they need precious little of that, as well).

John had accepted, around the time of Moriarty and the pool, that he'd spend the rest of his life with or near Sherlock. Now there's this physical dimension.  It's welcome and natural, yet still a bit surprising. It had never occurred to him, before Sherlock returned and said he wanted this, that they could ever be lovers. He had scarcely allowed himself to imagine it as a fantasy, let alone that it could be possible. That Sherlock would want this too.  

Once or twice on interminable, sleepless nights filled with dread, John let his longing and his own hand make a nocturnal wish of how it would be if the impossible (or, as it turned out, the inevitable) happened. For a minute or two afterwards, John would be comforted, and then almost immediately be filled with despair. He did not indulge that fantasy often.

Yet. Here they are. Together, in every way it is possible to be so. Not that it’s without its challenges.

Sherlock, for example, is obviously not hugely experienced with this whole relationship lark, except that it’s really just an extension of what they already had. The mechanics of sex are not alien to him, but the mechanics of intimacy are something he's still learning. Rather quickly, John thinks.  Faster than John learned those lessons.  Through the death of his mother and the difficulty of his relationship with his father and his sister, John has been wary of intimacy himself.  Until now. 

This is something they are learning together, then.

The sex has so far been wonderful, but also fuelled with anxiety. They wake up, pulses surging, blood singing with fearful adrenalin, and they reach for each other as though afraid to find themselves alone after all. Their bodies seek each other like magnets. Sometimes the reconnection is slow, treasuring the sensations, but mostly it’s frenetic, almost panicked.

John reflects on how slow and imperfect-but-perfect was their first night together, where they had responded to need before even articulating it. It had taken nearly losing each other to reach that point. An actual year of loss.

Sherlock turns his head, this night, to look at John, who is looking at him.

"You're thinking about when I was Away.”

"Yeah."

Sherlock’s mouth purses in thought. "What did you used to think about?” he asks at last, “What were you wishing for, when I wasn't here?"

It's an unusual question, from Sherlock. John answers him in a broad sense, wondering if the question means Sherlock is feeling insecure.  It's not his way to fish for compliments. "This.  You home and here, next to me.”

"No," the reply is impatient, "Don't be coy. I mean what, specifically?"

The penny drops and John quirks a small smile. Sherlock's pillow talk is still awkward sometimes, still a touch self-conscious, though Sherlock tries to cover that with brusqueness and impatience.

John brushes his palm against Sherlock’s hip.

"This," he says, "Touching your skin, and you not pulling away."

"As if I would."

"I didn't know that then." He strokes Sherlock's hip with his fingertips, gentle circles.

Sherlock is silent a moment, and then says: "To be fair, neither did I. Not at the beginning. It wasn't until I began to... wish things, that I understood."

John flattens his hand so that his whole palm strokes Sherlock, hip and thigh, back up again.

"I'd think of this too," John confesses, hand sweeping down, up, down, up, and then sliding gently across and over, fingertips now trailing against Sherlock's inner thigh. Sherlock inhales, sharp yet soft, and John smiles. "And that sound. Exactly that sound. That I'd touch you and you’d like it."

Sherlock hums, eyes closed, enjoying the sweep of John's palm and fingers on sensitive skin.  "What else?"

"No," says John quietly, but he is smiling when Sherlock opens his eyes to look at him, "You next. What did you wish for?"

Sherlock manages to look both sensuous and disgruntled. John sweeps his fingers further up Sherlock's inner thigh, almost to the crease, not yet touching anything but the thigh, but tantalisingly close.

"You there, next to me.," says Sherlock, a little breathlessly, "And you would tell me you forgave me for leaving you behind."

"And after that? When I had? "

"You didn’t, always."

"But I did. I always would." He lifts his fingers to brush teasingly against Sherlock’s cock, then away. Sherlock makes a needy noise and spreads his legs a little further.

"Then you would...” says Sherlock in that needy voice, “Put your hand here..." Sherlock takes John’s right hand and unexpectedly brings it up to his throat, against the carotid artery. He pushes John's fingers into the pulse point. "So you would know that I was alive." Sherlock swallows. He seems not to know why this is part of his old fantasy.

John shifts into his side, rearranges his limbs so that now he presses the fingers of his left hand into that steady pulse. He uses his other arm to prop himself up as he leans over, presses kisses to Sherlock’s temple, the corner of his eyes, the side of his mouth.

"I forgive you for leaving me," John says, soft and clear, "I hated it, but I understand why, and I forgive you." His lips meet Sherlock's and they share a long, slow, sweet kiss.  John feels and tastes the strange whimper Sherlock makes on hearing his words. He pushes his nose into the pulse on the closer side of Sherlock's neck, and there they lie for a moment, John’s face pressed into one side of Sherlock’s throat, his fingers pressed reassuringly against the artery on the other.  "You came back to me, and I forgive you."

A few rapid breaths in the dark and Sherlock says: "Now you, next. What did you...?"

"This." John's hand leaves that blessed pulse and moves over Sherlock's chest, over his ribs (over new scars that still hurt him to see) to his belly, then below, skimming over the top of Sherlock's still mostly soft cock, but it thickens at the touch. "Yes,” he approves in a whisper, “This. I'd imagine touching you, and you getting hard, just like this, _oh._ " He is kissing Sherlock's throat and chest now, kissing hardened nipples and tender dark scars.

"God _yes_ , John," Sherlock agrees, "Just like this." For this is where their fantasies coincide.

John stops kissing to say: "And I'd tell you how I missed you and you’d let me, without ticking me off for being so sentimental. I’d tell you how much you mean to me."

"S-say it." Sherlock’s eyes are closed and he is arching up, his body seeking John’s mouth and hand.

"Everything.” John says, recalling broken words whispered alone in the fearful darkness, “You mean more than there are words to say it. Every. Fucking. Thing." The last is punctuated with sensuous kisses, his mouth and tongue and teeth making exclamations of the pauses. Sherlock thrusts his hips up, pushing his now very hard cock into John's hand in response.

"Yes," says John, "Yes, that's what I imagined you'd do.  That, like that."

" _John_."

"That too.  Just like that."

Sherlock's hands slide around John's waist and tug him closer; he pushes and pulls until John obliges by straddling his thighs. Sherlock grunts approval and wraps one hand around John’s own erection, the other over John’s hip, gripping tightly against the rise of his arse.

"Wh-what else?" Sherlock asks.

John is grinding his hips, his erection, down onto Sherlock's. He is holding himself up with one hand on Sherlock’s ribs, the other on the bed by Sherlock’s head, and he drops a little closer, his mouth pressed hotly to Sherlock's ear.

The physical sensations are intense, but the emotions, heaven help him, they come from that gone, past place that still haunts him. All that loss spills out, converting as it does into a reassurance, a welcome. "Come home, come home, Sherlock, please, please, come home," John chants the litany he once chanted on those lonely, bereft nights.

"I will,” Sherlock gasps, “I have."

"You, now,” John says. The words are more a gust of air than an entreaty.

Sherlock pushes up into John’s hand, feels John’s inner thighs against his own hips, the brush of hot, thick flesh and tightening balls, of John’s stomach against the back of Sherlock's moving fist and his lips against Sherlock's ear.

"John," he says, "John.  John. John. _JohnJohnJohnJohn_." And John understands that this is what Sherlock said, those bereft and lonely nights of his own. " _JohnJohn **JohnJohn**_."

"Please,” he moans and pleads into Sherlock’s ear, “Come for me. Come f-f..."

Sherlock groans, his hand on John’s arse tightens, but not yet, he’s not quite there yet.

"What would I… say… to you, John?" he asks in gasps, a plea of his own now, “After… after… _oh god_ … you said… c-come home…?”

John won't say, or can't, because his breath is ragged. " _Sherlock_ ," he says. " _Sh-sh-sh_... _God. **You**_." So close.

But as he heads to climax, Sherlock says it anyway, says the words John once imagined, and imagined he would never hear.

"I love you” says Sherlock, the sounds almost insensible, but not, _oh not_ , and John hears and he comes, so hard, so hard, face pressed into Sherlock's cheek, he's crying out so perfectly, so absolutely perfectly, which sends Sherlock to his own spectacular orgasm, and Sherlock comes and comes, hips thrusting up again and again as John mutters hoarsely but with absolute conviction: "I love you, I love you, I love you" in panting breaths against Sherlock's ear.

 


End file.
